A bill to ban domestic abusers from having guns passed the Colorado Senate on Monday, despite objections from Republicans who said it amounted to gun confiscation.

The Senate approved Senate Bill 197, sponsored by Sen. Evie Hudak, D-Westminster, on a 20-15 party line vote.

Hudak and other supporters pointed out that in 2011, 13 people were shot and killed by domestic violence offenders who under federal law should not have had firearms.

Senate Minority Leader Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, on Friday had asked that the bill be laid over for a few days so that Democrats and Republicans could work on it together. Cadman, who'd told a gripping story Friday of his own family's domestic abuse situation, said this was a bill Republicans wanted to support but couldn't in its present form.

"This bill is ripe for abuse," he said. "It's ripe for confiscation of personal private property."

Under the bill, courts would be required to order anyone subject to a domestic violence protection order or convicted of domestic violence to relinquish their guns within 24 hours. A judge could extend that to 72 hours.

The person to relinquish the firearms could store them with a law enforcement agency or a federally licensed firearms dealer or sell or transfer them to someone else through a dealer.

The person relinquishing the guns would have to show a receipt of relinquishment within three days to a court. The right to the guns could be restored after a protection order had ben lifted.

Advertisement

But GOP senators said the bill would essentially amount to gun confiscation, forcing people to sell their guns for next-to-nothing if they can't find a firearms dealer or local sheriff willing to hold their guns. And because the law applies even in cases of protective orders, someone would have be forced to give up their guns even before being convicted of a crime, GOP senators said.

Supporters, though, said 19 other states have similar laws and it has worked in those places.

Missy Franklin, Jenny Simpson, Adeline Gray and three other Colorado women could be big players at the 2016 Rio OlympicsWhen people ask Missy Franklin for her thoughts about the Summer Olympics that will begin a year from Wednesday in Rio de Janeiro, she hangs a warning label on her answer.